Tel$tra will once again be flexing their monopolistic muscle and effectively downgrading the ADSL services provided through 3rd party ISP providers to users in Deakin. The ability for affected users to access or have the option of 3rd party ADSL+2 (as they do now) will be removed on 1 June 2009. Naturally Tel$tra structure their arguments to portray the changes and upgrades as unavoidable, essential and beneficial for the greater good, rather than highlighting the removal of choice, competition and functionality.

The ability to have LSS and ULLS based ADSL (where the ISP provides ADSL/ADSL+2 internet services over their own equipment, with or without the need for a normal phone service – effectively bypassing Tel$tra infrastructure) will be removed and users will have to suffer experiencing ADSL access on a RIM (technology from last century), slower, with less services at a higher price than they are currently paying. Rightly the ISPs providing the service see this as an anti-competitive practice and will be pursuing the issue with the ACCC.

Now for the the 20 megabit per second question: Which of the Federal Parliamentary Representatives will champion the cause and fight the fight for the people affected like Lundy did for “pair gain” victims when she was in opposition? I suspect that Lundy will be silent given that she is no longer the communications spokesperson and will be told to toe the ALP government line and not make waves.

Hi All, newb poster here so I won’t post the competitors names but I think there really are somewhat decent competitors to the iiNET/Internode type ADSL in the area (though I’ve never heard anything but good about Internode and don’t know much about iiNET so not knocking them at all) … I thought the local provider I used previously till they got to exepensive for my liking, had their own fibre network in place in the areas affected already, you know who i’m talkin bout? Though they’re a bit more pricey and have some dodgy plans there’s some resellers who aren’t to bad.

Also if you have line of sight to the top of MT Taylor from the roof of your home/dwelling it’s possible you could have a longreach wireless service installed which I currently use and am further down in chifley away from the tower getting 11MBit/s down and 3/MBit peak uploads (The advertised max speed but I did pay extra for a Striker on Install which focused the signal better) the upload speeds differ dramatically though depending on the location I’m uploading to, I uploaded to a guy in civic close to the civic exchange on adsl2 at 300KB/s sustained for 10 hours though which was pretty awesome (That’s DivX/XviD on demand speed) =D

You need good line of sight to the top of Mt Taylor to get that service and, I can’t really rate the service and support of the ONLY ISP that offers it very highly only a 5/10 but most ISPs are like that, only problem is you’re locked into them for your initial investment, getting it installed which cost me $300 + 12 month plan at $60 per month, and got hit with some nasty excess download charges cause they don’t shape the connection when you go over.

Also upload speeds to the US and elsewhere from speedtest.net tests were pretty average with average sustained throughput of 150KB/s which is a little less than 1.5MBit, but considering I used to download at those speeds I’m not to fussed 🙂

Final thoughts, while I dislike anti-competitive behaviour that hurts the consumer, It would be good to see iiNet/Internode say a big F.U to telstra by undercutting them with a better wireless service in the area or some other solution, obviously they need time to do this and Telstra has put them in the position of rapidly losing customers. Also Alexander building is about 100metres tops from MLC it seems pretty lazy not to move the copper connections, Tel$tra/Telecom were the one’s who put it there in the first place!